Citibank Terms

I received the Citi card and it is 0% interest for 12 mos. on balance transfers but they added a 3% BT fee. I'm still undecided about what to do. If we transfer $3,000.00 from Chase it would cost $90.00 but we would be saving money by not paying the crazy 23.24% rate on the Chase balance. I think I will wait to see how much J.'s month-end bonus will be and then make a decision. The Citi card hasn't yet been activated, which is a miracle since I've had it for almost a week. In my past financially irresponsible life it would have been activated immediately and most likely been used by now :)

Emergency Fund Via Stock Options

Our financial future is looking brighter thanks to J's stock options which were cashed in on Tuesday to the tune of $18,200.00. They were scheduled to expire in May so we needed to do something w/them and since the stock has been languishing for quite some time we decided to take the money and run. As luck would have it the stock went up $2.00/share after selling and is currently the highest its been in a loooong time! Oh well.

We initially thought we would use the $$ to pay off a large chunk of debt but finally decided to put it all in a high-yield savings account. We realized that we will never get out of our hole w/o a cushion and, in fact, would probably end up in a bigger hole without one. While it's very tempting to use some or all of it to pay off debt we've decided that we got ourselves into this mess in the first place and therefore should get ourselves out with blood, sweat and tears. We're still optimistic that we can be rid of our $26,000.00 CC debt by the end of the year. As previously mentioned it will be tough but we are up for the challenge! In the very near future I plan to address our plan of attack for achieving this goal.

Welcome to Citibank (or maybe not)

I recently mentioned that I applied for a Citibank CC that is supposed to be 0% interest for 12 mos. w/no balance transfer fees. The plan was to transfer $3600.00 from Chase after they jacked our APR to 23.24% and refused to lower the rate. I haven't received the Citi card yet but they recently sent me a welcome e-mail with some interesting info., please note the bold text:

Welcome to Citi(R) Home Rebate Platinum Select(R) Card
MasterCard(R) cardmembership! You should receive your new
card and Card Agreement within a week. If your card does not
arrive within 10 days from the date of this letter, please
call us immediately at 1-800-950-5114.

Information about your Annual Percentage Rate (APR) and
any eligible promotional rate will be displayed on the
folder containing your card. Some details of your
Card Agreement may be different from the terms that were
disclosed on your application. Please be sure to review
your Card Agreement for any changes.

We look forward to serving you for years to come.

Dear Citibank,

I can assure you that if the terms are any different than the terms for which I applied then you won't have the pleasure of serving me for many years to come.

Sincerely,
C.

Stay tuned to find out if I become a Citibank customer (or not!).

Chase Visa APR Increase Saga Continued

J. spoke w/Chase this morning and supposedly they did notify us of a rate increase on the Visa that just had an APR increase of 12.75%. I certainly don't recall this notification, nor can I find it anywhere but whatever. The reason given for the APR increase was "too many CC's" per a recent Experian review. I can't for the life of me understand why this is any of their beeswax, especially since we have been long time customers and have never made a late payment. By Googling CC interest rate increases, I found some interesting info. on a very recent Senate hearing (led by Senator Levin of MI) to examine the credit card industry’s practice of imposing interest rate increases on cardholders who pay their bills on time. The full article is here. Hopefully something can be done about this ridiculous BS. As previously mentioned, this is even more motivation (and yet another reason) to get out of CC debt!

In the meantime I just applied for and got approved for a Citibank 0% APR for one yr., 0% balance transfer w/no transfer fees. Unfortunately the limit is only $3,600.00 but I plan to transfer that amount from Chase asap. J. also gets a bonus at the end of the month which will go directly to paying off the Chase balances. Hopefully we can be rid of Chase in the very near future! Good riddance :)

#&*^% Chase Visa Interest Rate Increases

Chase Visa is now on my shit list and I'm peeved. J. has two Chase Visa accounts, one w/a balance of $2,949.00 and crappy interest rate of 17.49% and the other with a $5,610.00 balance and interest rate that was 10.49%. I logged on to Chase last night and noticed that the 10.49% rate is now 23.24%! How can the interest rate increase by 12.75% in one month?! No change in terms that I can find and no late payments. We recently reviewed our credit reports also and everything is squeaky clean. Hmmm... J. is supposed to be giving them a call and I'm anxious to see what is going on cuz I'm dumbfounded.

If that isn't ridiculous enough, we recently received a change in terms notice for the other acct. w/the current crap rate of 17.49%. Beginning in Feb. it is increasing to 26.49%! We are opting out of that lovely increase but gee whiz, thanks for at least letting us know about it. I could understand these usurious increases if we were deadbeats but good grief. Anyhoo, did I mention that Chase Visa is on my shit list?!

This recent BS has motivated us even more to get out of CC debt so perhaps I owe Chase a big thank you but on second thought it feels much better to say EFF YOU CHASE :)

Goals for 2008

I still can't believe it's 2008 but now that it's here our goals for the new year are:

• Eliminate all CC debt (approx. $26,000.00)
  
• Create an alternate stream of income by starting a home-based small business
• Open savings accounts for the girls
  

I will elaborate on each in separate posts but these are our goals! We will need to work very hard at eliminating the *&^%$ credit card debt but I'm confident it can be done. We shall see :)

Happy New Year to all!

Merry Belated X-Mas!

Whew! Now that X-mas is over and we are once again healthy I hope to resume posting on a regular basis. On a financial note I'm not certain how much we spent exactly on Christmas but I'm very happy to report that plastic was not involved in any X-Mas purchases (thank goodness)! J. and I don't spend much at all on each other and we don't indulge the girls, although they made out like bandits from family. Otherwise we bought presents for two nieces, one Aunt and J's Mother. We also chipped in $50.00 for a gift for my parents.

In regard to not indulging the girls, I made the decision after DD1 was born that we would not fall into the holiday consumerism trap of buying loads of garbage. The majority of DD1's presents were (and have been) practical gifts that she actually needs and will use. DD2 is only one and has no idea what is going on. I bought her a play cell phone and a pair of socks and she was thrilled! J. has struggled with not going crazy and buying the children tons of presents since he grew up w/very little but he's come around and is thankfully on board w/this.

While on the topic of indulgence, our neighbor, DD1's friend who is also 7, called and left a message that she received, among other things, two American Girl dolls, a Gameboy, an Ipod, a guitar and a real cell phone. Unbelievable!